`We could solve this! Come on! You can't be afraid of dying!' Angua plunged away.

`And you think spending a few thousand years buried in sludge is likely to be fun?' shouted Sally, but she was talking only to dripping mud and fetid air. She hesitated a moment, groaned and followed Angua.

Further along the main tunnel, there were more passages branching off. On either side, rivers of mud, like cool lava, were already flowing out of them. Sally splashed past something that

looked like a huge copper trumpet, turning gently on the current.

The tunnel was better built here than the sections nearer the well. And there at the end of it was a pale light and Angua, crouched by one of the big round dwarf doors. Sally paid her no attention. She barely glanced at the dwarf slumped with his back against the bottom of the door.

Instead, she stared at the symbol scrawled large on the metal. It was big and crude and might be a round, staring eye with a tail, and it gleamed with the greeny-white glow of vurms.

`He wrote it in his blood,' said Angua, without looking up. `They left him for dead but he was only dying, you see. He managed to make it to here, but the killers had shut the door. He scratched at it - smell here - and he's worn away his fingernails. Then he made that sign in his own warm blood and sat here, holding the wound shut, watching the vurms turn up. I'd say he's been dead for eighteen hours or so. Hmm?'

`I think we should get out of here right now,' said Sally, backing away. `Do you know what that sign means?'

`I know it's mine-sign, that's all. Do you know what it means?'

`No, but I know it's one of the really bad ones. It's not good seeing it here. What're you doing with that body?' Sally backed away further.

`Trying to find out who he was,' said Angua, searching the dwarf's clothing. `It's the sort of thing we do in the Watch. We don't stand around getting worried about drawings on the wall. What's the problem?'

`Right now?' said the vampire. `He's ... oozing a bit. .

`If I can stand it, so can you. You see a lot of blood in this job. Don't attempt to drink it, that's my advice,' said Angua, still rummaging. `Ah ... he's got a rune necklace. And' - she pulled a hand out of the dead dwarf's jerkin -'can't make this out very well, but I can smell ink so it may be a letter. Okay. Let's get out of here.' She looked round at Sally. `Did you hear me?'

`The sign was written by someone dying,' said Sally, still keeping her distance.

`Well?'

`Then it's probably a curse.'

`So? We didn't kill him,' said Angua, getting to her feet with some difficulty.

They looked down at the liquid mud now rising to their knees.

`Do you think it cares?' said Sally, matter of factly.

`No, but I think there may be another way out in that last turning we passed,' said Angua, looking back along the tunnel.

She pointed. Scuttling along with blind determination, a line of vurms marched across the dripping roof almost as fast as the mud flowed down below. They were heading into the side tunnel in a glowing stream.

Sally shrugged. `It's worth a try, yes?'

They left, and the sound of their splashing soon died away. Slowly the mud rose, rustling in the gloom. The trail of vurms

gradually disappeared overhead. The vurms that made the sign

remained, though, because such a feast as this was worth dying for. Their glow winked out, one insect at a time.

The darkness beneath the world caressed the sign, which flamed

red and died.

Darkness remained.

On this day in 1802 the painter Methodia Rascal tried putting the thing under a heap of old sacks, in case it woke up the Chicken, and finished the last troll, using his smallest brush to paint the eyeballs.

It was five a.m. Rain rustled out of the sky, not hard, but with a gentle persistence.

In Sator Square, and in the Plaza of Broken Moons, it hissed on the white ash of the bonfires, occasionally exposing the orange glow, which would briefly sizzle and spit.

A family of gnolls were sniffing around, each one dragging his or her little cart. A few officers were keeping an eye on them. Gnolls weren't choosy about what they collected, provided it didn't actually struggle, and even then there were rumours. But they were tolerated. Nothing cleaned up the place like a gnoll.

From here, they looked like little trolls, each with a huge compost heap on its back. That represented everything it owned, and mostly what it owned was rotten.

Sam Vimes winced at the pain in his side. Just his luck. Two coppers injured in the entire damn affair, and he had to be one of them? Igor had done his best, but broken ribs were broken ribs and it'd be a week or two before the suspicious green ointment made much difference.

Still, he enjoyed a bit of a warm glow about the whole thing. They had used good old-fashioned policing, and since good oldfashioned policemen are invariably outnumbered, he'd employed the good old-fashioned police methods of cunning, deceit and any damn weapon you could lay your hands on.

It had hardly been a fight at all. The dwarfs had mostly been sitting and singing gloomy songs because they fell over when they tried to stand up, or had tried to stand up and were now lying down and snoring. The trolls were, on the other hand, mostly upright, but went over when you pushed them. One or two, a little clearer in the head than the others, had put up a ponderous and laughable fight

but had fallen to that most old-fashioned of police methods, the well-placed boot. Well, most of them had. Vimes shifted to ease the aching in his side; he should have seen that one coming.

But all's well that ends well, eh? No deaths and, just to put a little cherry on the morning cake, he had in his hand an early edition of the Times in which a leading article deplored the gangs stalking the city and wondered if the Watch was `up to the job' of cleaning up the streets.

Well, yes, I think we are, you pompous twerp. Vimes struck a match on a plinth and lit a cigar in recognition of a petty but darkly satisfying triumph. Gods knew they needed one. The Watch had taken a pounding over the whole damn Koom Valley thing, and it was good to hand the lads something to be proud of for a change. All in all, it was definitely a Result

He stared at the plinth. He didn't remember what statue had once been there. It celebrated generations of graffiti artists now.

A piece of troll graffiti adorned it, obliterating everything done by the artists who used mere paint. He read:

MR SHINE

HIM DIAMOND

Mine sign, city scrawl, he thought. Things go bad, and people are moved to write on the walls ...

`Commander!'

He turned. Captain Carrot, armour gleaming, was hurrying towards him, his face as usual radiating an expression of 100 per cent pure Keen.

`I thought I told every officer not on prisoner duty to get some sleep, captain,' said Vimes.

`Just clearing up a few things, sir,' said Carrot. `Lord Vetinari sent a message down to the Yard. He wants a report. I thought I'd better tell you, sir.'

`I was just thinking, captain,' said Vimes expansively. `Should we put up a little plaque? Something simple? It could say something like "Battle of Koom Valley Not Fought Here, Grune the 5th, Year of the Prawn." Could we get them to do a bloody stamp? What do you think?'

`I think you need to get some sleep yourself, commander,' said Carrot. `And technically, it isn't Koom Valley Day until Saturday.'

`Of course, monuments to battles that didn't take place might be stretching things a bit, but a stamp-'

`Lady Sybil really worries about you, sir.' Carrot broadcast concern.